EDMONTON – The Labour Day games and their rematches are a famous Canadian Football League tradition, but it’s the fans like Dave Graham and his friends that make it so special.
Every year since 2010, Graham and a group of friends head to Commonwealth Stadium to watch the Green and Gold play as a means of honouring their fathers.
“My father was a die-hard Edmonton football fan, and he had tickets for about 40 years,” Graham said. “I remember I always grew up going to the games with him, even back in Clarke Stadium days. He passed away in 2010, and when he died my friends knew that I was a huge fan of my dad, so they got me a jersey with my dad’s favorite player number which was Tom Wilkinson. It was number twelve and with his name Harry on the back.”
“I decided a great way to pay tribute to my dad was to take a handful of my buddies and every year just buy the best seats that I could at the time. Every year we would go to a game and we’d raise a glass and think about my dad and they would support me.”
Over the years, the tradition has grown with some of Graham’s other friends also getting their own jerseys to honour their own fathers. John Curran has a jersey featuring his father name Mike and his dad’s favourite player’s number one for Warren Moon. Kevin McKee has a jersey with his father name Garnet and his dad’s number 14 from when he was a member of the CJFL’s Saskatoon Hilltops, winning championships with the team in 1958 and 1959.
In the last 14 years, many others have joined in on the celebration, but Graham, Curran and McKee are the ones who have their fathers immortalized on Green and Gold jerseys. This year, like many others, Graham and six friends will go to the Labour Day rematch.
“The weather is generally pretty great in early September and it’s always a really good game because Calgary is the big rivalry,” Graham said. “The Labor Day rematch is a great game.”
“We all grew up going to games,” he added. “Some of us went with our parents. Some of us snuck in. Some of us were Knothole gang members. So it would be hard pressed to give you an exact memory that I had with my dad, but I got a love of Edmonton football from my dad.”
It’s a love that Dave Graham has helped pass on to his son, who has hiss very own number 12 Harry jersey. The pair have also gone to games to help honour his father, but for the most part, the experience is a chance to celebrate the guidance and love of football given by their dads.
“We all want to celebrate our fathers. We’re all fathers that go to this game, so we celebrate ourselves as fathers and try and take the best out of our dads and use that as an example.”
“We always raise a glass to our dads. We sing the Edmonton fight song, I blow my dad a kiss to section J, row 32, because that’s where we were the whole time and I just really just want to support the team.”